Easily swayed by people's opinions

[Luisrah]

The origin of my leftist tendencies is due to my father being a marxist leninist, and somethings that come with it worry me.

I idolize my father a lot, and whenever he says something that sounds wrong or that I don't agree very much, my thought isn't ''he's wrong'' or ''I don't agree with that'', it is ''he is right, I'm just not understanding it completely''.

But that doesn't just happen with my father, it happens a bit with everyone. Whenever someone tells me something, I usually believe in them (unless it's something really stupid), and I think it is partly because I'm 17 and I tend to look at people that are older than me as wise so, ''they have lived more than me, I'm still young, so it's probably him/her that is right''

I think the cause of this is that I have a little low self-esteem, but I don't want to look like a whiner lol

So my question was if anyone has or does experience this and how would you act towards having a more independent mind?

Reading books that criticise marxism and confronting opinions (except the ones telling that it killed 100 million) seems like a good idea to me, but I want to know what you think.

[Jalapeno Enema]

Practice picking apart arguments that you know are utter bull crap, paying attention to the flaws in their arguments and how to recognize them. Pretty soon you'll start to get the hang of recognizing these flaws in logic, and it'll become almost second nature to see through an argument.

Try The Flat Earth Society (http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/) to start picking apart poor arguments. When reading about Discworld (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discworld) as science, don't just think "this is wrong", but rather "why is this wrong? How do I know this is wrong?"

Also, pick up some philosophy books, esp. ones focused around fallacies. One of my favorites is The Duck That Won the Lottery (http://www.amazon.com/Duck-That-Won-Lottery-Arguments/dp/184708043X) by Julian Baggini, who loves tearing apart bad arguments.

[pastradamus]

The origin of my leftist tendencies is due to my father being a marxist leninist, and somethings that come with it worry me.

I idolize my father a lot, and whenever he says something that sounds wrong or that I don't agree very much, my thought isn't ''he's wrong'' or ''I don't agree with that'', it is ''he is right, I'm just not understanding it completely''.

But that doesn't just happen with my father, it happens a bit with everyone. Whenever someone tells me something, I usually believe in them (unless it's something really stupid), and I think it is partly because I'm 17 and I tend to look at people that are older than me as wise so, ''they have lived more than me, I'm still young, so it's probably him/her that is right''

I think the cause of this is that I have a little low self-esteem, but I don't want to look like a whiner lol

So my question was if anyone has or does experience this and how would you act towards having a more independent mind?

Reading books that criticise marxism and confronting opinions (except the ones telling that it killed 100 million) seems like a good idea to me, but I want to know what you think.

Well, you remind me of myself when I was your age (god I feel so old saying that!). Well, I started out as a Marxist-Leninist but later rejected Leninism. But back then I would have listened to anybody with left-wing views and I would have been influenced by them - its only natural that you are like this too. Now, I will say that while people that are older than you have had more experiences than you - you are not nessecarily wrong in any way and I believe you are a pretty intelligent guy- so dont be afraid to argue with them. You are 17, most 70 year olds dont have the knowledge of Marx that you might have.

I remember a job that I had in a department store when I was 17. When somebody asked me if I had any tattoo's, I showed them a tattoo of Che Guevara on my shoulder. Most of them didn't know who he was - except two guys in their 40's who told me his name and then said "he was a terrorist from Cuba, he was cool when we were young!".....so imagine the explaination I had to give then?

What im saying is NEVER DOUBT YOURSELF COMRADE. Young does not equal stupid and you will find that out for yourself.